Is there an expectation that the number of people that leave will be replaced by new members drawn by the new features? If not, doesn't it follow that maybe the site should have been left alone featurewise, and therefore the performance issues would not have occurred? Seems to me that would have saved a lot of typing.
While I have addressed this issue many times, I will try one more time.
While it seemed like everything was just Hunky-Dory on the forums before we installed the first upgrades, the reality was that the patient had undiagnosed cancer, and that it had not yet been detected.
The entire server array WAS operating at it's limit, but no one had noticed it. It was throwing out the occasional database error, and there were some very minor delays here and there that no one noticed. But all was not well on the ship.
As we began upgrading the site we increased the load, and rapidly began to see performance degradation. Some of the modules, such as Live Topic, placed a huge demand on the servers, and were removed, others placed a much small demand and were left in place. After a few weeks we had installed sufficient tracking software that we were now monitoring the average Load Factor for every 15min period of the day to determine just what was going on. In the background we swapped out servers, we changed databases, we optimized everything we could. We even "borrowed" servers from other functions on the network to try to bolster SnoWest. but all the time our daily numbers were increasing and the demand was constantly increasing.
Regardless of the modifications that we installed, these servers HAD TO BE REPLACED. It was only a matter of WHEN and not of it. In the past it was done a just enough to get by basis, as the site was not supporting the kind of investment required to really do it right. So in light of where everything was, and where they really wanted it to be at in the future, the decision was made to massively upgrade all aspects of the SnoWest Hardware Infrastructure to be able to support the forums for years moving forward.